Honours

Mr. Pope
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many officials in his Department have received honours; and how many honours are held by his officials, broken down by category of honour. [111490]

Mr. Straw
In the five-year period from New Year 1999 to Birthday 2003, 170 officials will have received awards in honours lists prepared by my Department, as follows: GCMG—6, D/KCMG—21, CMG—50, D/KBE—8, CBE—1, QBE—37, MBE—47: total 170, or an average of 34 per annum. This does not include awards in the Royal Victorian Order, which are made personally by The Queen.We are unable to provide the information on the number of honours held by officials as the information is not kept on a database and could only be collected at disproportionate cost.